Quotation Marks

[Grenage]

I'm sure that there is a simple rule for this and that it has somehow escaped me, but I do not recall being taught it.

When quoting a passage or part of a speech I generally nest it in quotation marks; I have however seen people use apostrophes in their stead.

I have always assumed quotation marks were the correct choice (hence the name), but are either acceptable or are apostrophes used for a completely different purpose?

 

[sha76]

I'd have called them single quotes rather than apostrophes (& as opposed to double quotes).
I was taught to use them to aid clarity if you're quoting someone who is quoting someone else eg I would quote a passage from a book as: "She said 'xxxxxxxx'".
I would use the double quotes for whatever I'm quoting & the single for quotes within that, although that may just be habit.


"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[Grenage]

That would make sense. Thank you for the clarification Sha.

 

[CajunCenturion]

I think that's right. You should use double quotes when directly quoting some source, but if inside that quote is another quote, than a single quote would be used. You would continue alternating between double quotes and single quotes to remove any ambiguity between where any specific quote starts and ends.

Good Luck
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[Stella740pl]

Grenage,

This thread1256-823418 has somewhat confusing title, but I believe it's what you are looking for.

Stella

 

[Dimandja]

Grenage,

In the thread pointed to by Stella, I said this about single vs double quotes:

Fred says "come here". -> direct quote.
That's a 'come here' look. -> look is described, not a quote.

 

[Grenage]

Thank you kindly, all is clear now.

 

[SQLSister]

Not to make things less clear, but if the quote is over 5 lines long it should be indented on both margins rather than use the quotation marks.

Also in the US, if the quotation mark is at the end of a sentence, the pucntuation should be inside the quotation mark even if it was not part of the original quotation.

Personally, I hate this rule and tend to use the punctuation outside the quotation mark if it is not part of the quote. I think it is clearer that way.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[Stella740pl]

SQLSister,
Check the thread for which I posted the link above. We have covered the topic of punctuation inside/outside the quotation there, too, along with historical reasons for this rule. It might be of interest to you.